Books for little geeks

Or rather, books from geeks, GeekDads to be specific.
Today Michael Harrison at GeekDad has a post about Laura’s new b00kn3rd.com blog [it took me a while to figure out that "book nerd" is in there, but then I'm still woozy from my breakfast of waffles, whipped cream, and strawberries] and her post on rare children’s [...]

Do it Yourself Science

Via Boing Boing and Pharyngula, word of a new, subversive (that’s PZ’s term) chemistry book, just out this week from the Make Magazine folks:

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture by Robert Bruce Thompson, part of O’Reilly Media’s DIY Science series.
Thompson is also the author, along with his wife Barbara Fritchman [...]

Links

We’ve been busy here, recovering from the Festival and celebrating the kids’ successes (including Laura’s big wrap-up prize for most outstanding student performing in three disciplines and going on to provincials for poetry/public speaking and musical theater), doing some more Spring cleaning (I still have a few walls to wash and all of the windows [...]

New from Jay Hosler

Via P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula, news that biologist and cartoonist (and Farm School favorite) Jay Hosler has a new book out, Optical Allusions.
I’ve written before, here and in comments at other blogs, about Dr. Hosler’s earlier titles, The Sandwalk Adventures: An Adventure in Evolution Told in Five Chapters and Clan Apis).  He writes about the [...]

Craftsmanship

In yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Book Review, Lewis Hyde reviewed the new title The Craftsman by Richard Sennett (Yale University Press, March 2008). From the review:
… Sennett’s book gathers case after case in which we see how the work of the hand can inform the work of the mind. Moreover, it is through [...]

Mud pies and bibliobituaries

One of our favorite books, especially for Spring, is Mud Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls by Marjorie Winslow, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, whose Great Hamster Hunt, also out-of-print, is still on my shelves.
So I was delighted to see it receive a lengthy “salute” from independent bookseller Alison Morris on her blog, Shelftalker. [...]

A man and his wolf

There’s a new BBC2 documentary, part of the “Natural World” series, about Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) and his wolf Lobo, one of the subjects of Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known. The new documentary isn’t to be confused with the 1962 Disney live action movie, “The Legend of Lobo”.
In The Telegraph, Steve Gooder, director [...]

Our Maggie and Our Anne

Still plowing through weekend papers:
In The Guardian, Margaret Atwood’s salute to Anne of Green Gables and “Annery”:
Nor is this process at an end: from the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority that gives the nod to all collateral products, expect more Anne boxed sets, Anne notepaper and Anne pencils, Anne coffee mugs and Anne [...]

Sunday catch-up

English celebrity Katie Price (apparently also known as Jordan when she’s modeling for Page 3 of The Sun and Playboy; Wikipedia seems more than adequate here if you haven’t heard of her either) is in the middle of a book brouhaha in the UK. In 2006, Random House UK handed over a £300,000 advance [...]

Robert Fagles (1933-2008)

From Chris Hedges’s article in The New York Times, “A Bridge Between the Classics and the Masses”, April 13, 2004:
On his deathbed, the Roman poet Virgil asked that the manuscript of his greatest work, The Aeneid, be destroyed. It was, after a decade of writing, still flawed. And perhaps, as some have suggested, this gentle [...]

Uh-oh Canada

I forgot.
I recuperated and got busy with Easter, and then Tom’s birthday (Tuesday) and Laura’s 4H field trip to a nearby bakery (also Tuesday and delicious), and then got thoroughly sidetracked by some Spring cleaning and shopping (yesterday).
Which means I missed getting anything ready for Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray’s literary salute to Canada. [...]

Something new for the vernal equinox

While ordering our favorite children’s Spring solstice book — Ellen Jackson’s The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth — I noticed that another favorite seasonal author, Wendy Pfeffer, has a new book out this year, A New Beginning, illustrated by Linda Bleck (January 2008, Dutton). It’s on order throughout our library system; [...]

Roget redux

Just about two months ago, when I hosted Poetry Friday on Peter Mark Roget’s birthday, I celebrated the man with his entry for “poetry”.
If you didn’t get enough Roget then, you can now find online last week’s Washington Post review, and this week’s New York Times’s review of what the latter calls “Joshua Kendall’s fine [...]

Book shopping

With a bunch of birthdays this month and next (including Tom’s and Daniel’s) and a few other occasions, I’ve just done some online book shopping. Some of the goodies:
From Chapters.ca:
How to Build Treehouses, Huts and Forts and Fun Projects for You and the Kids, both by David Stiles, whom the boys consider their new [...]

A good life

I don’t normally get obituaries in my Google Alerts, but the one below, from The St. Petersburg Times turned up over the weekend, and I find it moving and inspiring, even without death, dying, and obituaries on my mind.
Books took her wherever she wanted to go
by Stephanie Hayes, Times Staff Writer
Published March 8, 2008
TAMPA - [...]

Saluting Canadian authors

Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray has word today that
the group who organized the One Shot World Tour stop in Australia last August has decided to salute Canadian authors on March 26th. If anyone wants to participate you are more than welcome - this is 100% NOT a YA [Young Adult books] only event, so [...]

I forgot…

to mention in my last post just below that Mrs. G. at Derfwad Manor mentioned  the other day that…
“The second March Book Give-Away will be homeschooling books!”
So consider yourself notified and stay tuned to Derfwad Manor.

Disagreeably agreeable

The very funny, kind, and generous Mrs. G. at Derfwad Manor earlier this week had a draw for a book giveaway (heck, it was a books giveaway, and international to boot), and with some misgivings I tossed my name in the hat for The Dictionary Of Disagreeable English: A Curmudgeon’s Compendium of Excruciatingly Correct Grammar [...]

Links

The February Carnival of Children’s Literature is up, and Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day is hosting.
I missed last week’s Poetry Friday, which was hosted by Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating.
The February edition of the online children’s literature monthly, The Edge of the Forest, is up, and includes reviews as well as [...]

Following up on “What to Do About Alice?”

Children’s author Barbara Kerley was kind enough to leave another message the other day letting me know that the classroom activities for her new biography of Alice Roosevelt, What To Do About Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy — whether your classroom is in a [...]